18 June 2015

I have, like so many people, been watching House of Cards via Netflix DVDs. The first season was hypnotic. The second season not so much. I may not watch the third season. Why? It's real simple: Nobody seems to be having any fun. Not the President, not his wife, not the staff, not the Secret Service guys, and especially not Francis and Clare Underwood. I mean, what's the point of pursuing power by any means, if you're not going to have a good time screwing everyone over? Even the sex romps are grim. More on that later.

Think about prime-time TV these days. Who's enjoying the game on Game of Thrones? Did Walter White ever kick back and watch trash TV on Breaking Bad? I experienced the world of Mad Men, and the people I remember had a lot more fun drinking and screwing than Draper and pals ever did. Do The Americans ever just go fishing? Wayward Pines is so dark you can't see the road, much less the actors. Every plot is convoluted, everybody is up to their necks in conspiracies, everyone is always plotting their next move, and everyone is soooo serious...

But that isn't the way the real world works. People go fishing. They relax. They get hooked on Candy Crush or Triple Town. They binge-watch anything they can. Joseph Stalin liked cowboy movies, Charlie Chaplin, Georgian wine, and billiards. The man knew how to relax. So did others: Mao Zedong was a master calligrapher and a fairly decent poet. He also really enjoyed women. Hitler loved listening to Putzi Hanfstaengl play piano, and apparently had a fondness for dogs. Osama bin Laden wrote love letters in between calls for jihad. Napoleon loved Josephine and cheating at cards. In other words, in the real world, even totalitarian monsters take a break once in a while and have a good time.

Meanwhile, Francis Underwood even gave up ribs. (And considering how solemn everyone was before and after, that three-way didn't do much to loosen anyone up.)

Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole
in the 2005 BBC production of
"Bleak House"

I miss the villains of yesteryear. Count Fosco, hugely fat, delighting in pastry, the endless cigarettes his wife hand rolls for him, great glasses of sugar water, and playing with his tiny little mice while he works [successfully] to have Lady Glyde declared dead after he imprisons her in a madhouse. And all despite his deep admiration, love, passion, for her sister, Marian Halcombe. Now there's a villain who is not only ruthless - read The Woman in White and see - but knows how to have fun while doing it. Or there's Harold Skimpole, the middle-aged "child" who cannot understand why people are so cruel and harsh as to not supply him with his daily needs, gratis, so that he can live like the charming butterfly he is, while betraying everyone in Bleak House in the worst possible way. (He is the reason that the child street-sweeper Jo dies.) You want to kill him, but he's certainly having a great time. Of course, Dickens really knew how to write hand-rubbing, chuckling, glint-in-the-eye villains: Ebenezer Scrooge, the Marquis St. Evremonde, Fagin, and that ultimate hypocrite, Josiah Bounderby.

Or, on screen:

Henry Fonda's Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West,

Basil Rathbone's Andre Trochard in We're No Angels,

Lionel Barrymore's Harry F. Potter in It's A Wonderful Life,

Peter Ustinov's Nero in Quo Vadis, and, of course,

Charlton Heston's Richelieu in The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers.

The late, great Christopher Lee in The Man With the Golden Gun.

Now granted, there was a lot of over-acting in these - Henry Fonda and Charlton Heston were obviously having the time of their lives as they FINALLY got to play the villain! But I think there's a lot of over-underacting today. It's the latest style: very self-controlled, laser-serious, apparently clinically depressed villains who don't take pleasure in anything, even power once they get it (if they ever do). But if you go back a few decades, and you find villains who smirked, sneered, sauntered, and basically acted like Bette Davis in The Little Foxes.

Or you can always go back to the original: Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart in the original, UK House of Cards, who was ruthless, deadly, witty, with a smile like a silver-haired Puck. "You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment." Watching Richardson's Francis, I always felt that, while he'd definitely sold his soul to the devil, he got full price for it. (And it was a hell of a lot more than one shared cigarette a night...) And he enjoyed everything he got.

28 August 2014

So I was watching the morning news and there was a commercial where two guys walk into a fast food joint and see the sign for a Double Jalepeno burger. With, of course, lots of cheese. And they smile at each other, order one each, and life is bliss. My husband, who has an Irish stomach, winced. Myself, I was thinking, that's American cuisine today: you want flavor with that? Here's some cheese and hot peppers. What more do you want?

Not the burger, but
I don't want to get sued.

That's what we're known for. Cheese and hot peppers. Slathered all over everything. The cheese runs thick on the tongue, smothering most of the taste buds. The hot peppers add shock value. Cheap, filling, and one hell of a lot less trouble than actually, say, making a mole sauce, or a bechamel. Although nowadays what you'll be given for bechamel sauce is generally Alfredo sauce, thick and pasty with flour and, you guessed it, cheese. In other words, tarting it up with cheese and hot peppers is easier than getting involved in the time-consuming artistic complexity of producing flavor.

It's the same in entertainment. Sex and violence. If things get slow, throw in a naked woman. Or an explosion. Or a riff of automatic weapons. (Speaking of which, I'm sure you heard about the 9-year-old girl at a shooting range outside Las Vegas who accidentally killed the instructor with the Uzi he was showing her how to use. 9 year olds and Uzis, what could possibly go wrong? We don't even let 9 year olds drive, even here in South Dakota, where 14 years old get learner's permits, so what the hell was he thinking... Okay, enough rant on that...)

Back to sex and violence. Much safer. Now I understand that sex and violence are what titillates the masses, including you and me, but sometimes I want something more: plot; wit; character; nuance. By the way, I watched an interesting review of "Outlander", the new series based on the Diana Gabaldon time-traveling fantasy series, in which the sole woman on the panel pointed out that, while this show was obviously being marketed to heterosexual women (hot men in kilts and all that), when it came down to it, there were a heck of a lot of naked women in it and no naked men. Now what's that about? Couldn't it even occur to the producers (6 out of 8 male) that (most) women prefer naked men?

Okay, back to character. I've been binge-watching Michael Gambon's 1990's Maigret, and enjoying it heartily. (I love reading Maigret, too - it's one of the main reasons and ways that I've learned to read French.) And I noticed something that hadn't really struck me before: Jules Maigret is normal. He's a good, decent, bourgeois man who drinks/eats/smokes a little more than he should but not too much, who loves his wife, and who really likes his co-workers (except for the examining magistrates). He likes people generally, including most of the petty criminals he deals with. And yet he's absolutely real, grounded in details and mannerisms and nuances that are very subtle. In other words, he's an old-fashioned hero. It's very refreshing.

But I think too many "heroes" have been run through our jalepeno culture. I've seen too damned many lead characters who are damaged addicts (alcohol/drugs/gambling/sex), and/or whose significant other was brutally murdered by a mysterious serial killer, and/or who are promiscuous to hide their longing for love or their lack of ability to love, and/or who has significant PTSD and/or traumatic childhood experiences and/or mental illness and/or OCD/bi-polar/etc., and almost ALL of them are obnoxious to everyone around them (and yet are mysteriously loved despite of it)... Folks, that isn't character, that's a laundry list. What started out as an exception - with the ability to shock, startle, amaze, entertain - has become the norm, which means... well, cheese and jalapenos on everything.

Hollywood meth-makers

Real meth-maker

And it's often taken to the point where there's no one to root for. Everyone is lousy, including their kids. Everyone is crooked. Everyone will do anything, anywhere, any time to get ahead. Nobody even tries to be pleasant, much less good. And don't even get me started on "Breaking Bad": I do not, repeat, DO NOT watch shows or read books where serial killers and/or drug manufacturer killers are the heroes. I'm an old-fashioned girl at heart. Besides, the villains are even more alike than the defective detectives: always brilliant, always brutal, always cold, always with superhuman timing, and the only difference is how they do it and whether or not they eat their kill. Boring...

At the same time, I can enjoy a good noir with the rest of them, and God knows in Dashiell Hammett's and Raymond Chandler's world, everyone is crooked as they come, and that's fine with me. Because Spade and Marlowe longed for heroism and decency, like thirsty men for water, and tried to be knights errant, even if their armor was more tarnished than shining. That's what I want in my hero, at the very minimum. I want them to recognize honor when they see it, like Silver-Wig in "The Big Sleep", and to be able - at least some times - to resist treachery and temptation, like Brigid O'Shaughnessy in "The Maltese Falcon." I want them to know the difference between good and evil, in the world and in themselves. I want them to care about the difference between good and evil, in the world and in themselves. I want them to want to be a hero, even when they fail.